https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news.atomThe Hipstery and Adam Fletcher - The Hipstery Blog2015-01-19T13:40:00+01:00The Hipstery and Adam Fletcherhttps://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/16752128-introducing-pegida2015-01-19T13:40:00+01:002015-01-19T12:00:44+01:00Introducing...Pegida™!Adam Fletcher
If you prefer, you can read the German translation of this article here.

Hallo Mitbürger,

Have you noticed that life is a little bit hard? Are you disappointed that you didn't become an astronaut after all? Did you make some shitty life choices and would prefer someone else to blame for them? Did you lose the job you weren't very good at to someone who was better at it? Did you hear people on the street talking in a language you didn't understand? Are you disillusioned by out of touch politicians?

Well, worry not, lieber Mitbürger, for we have a new miracle solution to offer you...We call it Pegida™!

Pegida™ technology offers you an instant and magical new world view, vastly superior to your previous world view, for all the following reasons:

Fact blindness

With the help of Pegida™, you become immune to the effects of inconvenient facts. If anyone from the "lying press" tries to contradict your world view, your brain will automatically short-circuit like a robot vacuum cleaner covered in milk. Thanks to Pegida™, when someone confronts you with the so called "truth", you'll repeat a series of standard phrases until they go away. Phrases such as - “Lügenpresse” "Fakten. Hör mir mit all diesen Scheißfakten auf!", "Nur 2%? Das ist mir egal, das sind schon 2% zu viel!", "Wir müssen die Kirche im Dorf lassen", or "Ich habe nichts gegen Ausländer, aber ..."

Of course, Pegida™ doesn't block all facts, just the most uncomfortable ones. Facts like "gravity" or "you like beer" will remain. But facts like "Although there will be problems along the way, the world is better when its people are free to live how and where they choose" will not. And really, really difficult facts like "Open borders are not the problem, refugees are not the problem, Islam is not the problem, Europe is not the problem, in fact, Europe is part of the solution to the problem of ignorance and xenophobia" will be completely suppressed. What will be completely suppressed? Exactly.

Advanced Scapegoating

Scapegoating was an ancient tradition that involved taking a goat, projecting all of your problems, sins and disappointments upon it and then casting it out to the desert. It was a very fun and effective way to deal with your problems, because you weren't the goat. However, until now, the scapegoating system has always required a) a goat, and b) a desert.

Not with Pegida™! Pegida™ users are able to make absolutely anything into a scapegoat for society’s problems. Are you okay with foreigners, but disappointed about something else? Your life? Politics? Asylum seekers? The GEZ? That's fine. All are welcome at its weekly Monday meetup. Make your sign, come on down, bring your goat, and take a walk with us. Pegida™ is like the sausage of disappointment - it's got a bit of everything in it.

Selective Amnesia

Remember when you were growing up in the GDR under that oppressive socialist regime that limited your rights to take part in really awesome verbs such as - say, do, go, travel, live, and experience? Well, with Pegida™'s selective amnesia function you won't! You'll forget that we've already tried the borders-walls-restricted-movements-points-us-vs-them-good-guys-vs-bad-guys-tribes-fear approach to running the world, and that it was a giant, bloody failure.

Instant Community

Do you get lonely sometimes? Do you wish there were other people around who shared your opinions? Do you enjoy viewing the architecture of German cities with their lights off? Are your Monday evenings usually free? Perfect! Because with Pegida™ you’re joining a community. Without it, you are just a disappointed individual who thinks no-one is listening to you. But with it, oh boy, you get to be part of a group of disappointed individuals who think no-one is listening to them! Much better! Many don't know exactly what it is they're not being listened to about, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be angry about it. Rabble! Rabble! With Pegida™ you get to be one of the Volk.

Heightened Irrationality

As a default, we humans are notoriously irrational. Many of us suffer from something called dysrationalia which is being unable to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence. Dysrationalia explains why otherwise smart people might believe in horoscopes, Yeti, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or Xenu, the ruler of the Galactic Confederacy. Pegida™ has been designed to heighten our natural irrationality so that we can believe in EVEN more far-fetched things, like that the German way of life is somehow threatened by the economic and societal benefits of free movement, immigration and cultural exchange!

With Pegida™ this irrationality is also possible in the form of contradictions - Ausländers are taking all our jobs, yet Ausländers are only here to leech off of our social system. We are the people, yet no-one is listening to us. Some of us are fanatics, yet marching against fanaticism. Zero tolerance towards criminality when committed by immigrants, yet founded by a convicted criminal. The press lie about Pegida™, yet we won’t be interviewed to tell them the truth. With Pegida™ you can have hours of fun groping in the dark of logic.

There's an English expression that says, "if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail". Pegida™ works on a similar principle. Only, it's more like, "if all you have is Pegida™, everything starts to look like Islamisierung."

This article is from the author of Make Me German a funny, entertaining look at integrating (or failing to) into every day German life. Learn more.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/14467745-the-heftig-co-effect-aka-as-you-wont-believe-what-happened-when-this-guys-book-was-featured-on-heftig-co2014-06-11T16:46:00+02:002014-06-11T17:14:03+02:00The Heftig.co Effect aka as "You won't believe what happened when this guy's book was featured on Heftig.co"!Adam Fletcher
"Have you seen that Heftig website?" asked my friend Alex, as we were sitting in a bar in Mitte."Funnily enough, I just blocked it from my timeline today" I said."I'm not surprised, I've had that one about old people's Tattoo's on my timeline about 74 times this week.""Don't look at that one while eating. Also, most of the pictures in it are literally just old people with tattoos, there's no way of knowing if they got them fifty years or one week ago.""I saw a report that said they now have more social traffic than Spiegel Online and Bild, combined.""Old people? That seems unlikely, most can barely email.""No, Heftig, you moron.""Oh. Yeah. It's a sick, sad world." I said.

About three days after this conversation, by coincidence, I received an email from a Mr Sven Heftig, the batman of click-bait (since unmasked). He'd seen my original HTBG list post from 2012, which had gone viral again on this spam blog and wanted to post a German version on Heftig.

Heftig, is the German buzzfeed. At least in principal, since Buzzfeed has original content and while almost all of that content is rather dumb, it's a least trying. Heftig, at least until now is mostly just a German language spam content farm designed purely to harvest click-bait content perfect for FB timeline click-throughs.

Of course, I immediately forgot all my ethics and principals, because the principled writer very often becomes the principal former writer who now works in the Deutsche Bahn Service Center. So ,of course, my publisher and I said yes to the request and shortly after, this post was published Ein Engländer erklärt, wie man Deutscher wird.

In the article they linked to the books landing page, and not directly to Amazon, so I got to see the traffic passing through Here are the stats.

Amazon Sales Rank before post: 1250. Peak Amazon Sales Rank after post: 14thTime book stayed in Amazon Top 100: 7 days (17 days later, it is currently at 303.)Spiegel Best Seller List rank before Heftig: 40th (the book had already been on the list for 56 weeks and was declining fast in the last few before the Heftig feature, for some reason Buch Report only shows the last five weeks.)Spiegel Best Seller List rank after Heftig: 14th (it single-handedly jumped the book 26 places!)Unique visitors to the books landing page: 10,150 (were referred directly from the Heftig feature).FB shares: For some reason they deleted the FB post, last time I saw it there were around 10k likes, and 3k shares plus many amusing comments like "too long", "too much text", which help explain why it is hard to sell books in 2014.

You can say what you want about Heftig and I've said plenty of mean things, but they sure help sell books. I'll be interested to watch if they are able to move away from this type of click-bait spam towards original content, as they have promised in recent interviews. If so, I'd be more than happy to supply them more of it, or to put that proposal in more tempting speech "You won't believe what this guy will do to sell books! Look how shamelessly he markets himself to anyone who'll listen!

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/10284933-an-open-letter-from-the-city-of-berlin2013-11-20T11:35:12+01:002013-11-20T12:26:05+01:00An open letter from the city of BerlinAdam Fletcher

Hallo Leute,

It's me, your old buddy Berlin! You may remember me from such important historical moments as "American president calls himself a donut", "here come the Russians" and "black man outruns white men to the annoyance of other white men". Yeah, that's right, Berlin! Brandenburg's noisy neighbour...

How are you? What have you been up to lately? Doing a lot of those fun human things? Arguing with your neighbours? Being cruelly overlooked for promotions by your idiot of a boss? Making selfies? I bet you have. You little cute, mobile, fun bag.

I'm sorry I've not been in touch lately. It's mostly because I've been very busy not caring about you at all, because I'm an arbitrary grouping of buildings, parks, and lakes, combined together in a manner that allows for simpler transport, sharing of resources and government supervision.

I felt compelled to write you now though, in response to all the many, many words you've been writing about me in recent years. If I had ears, they'd almost always be red. So many words, so much discourse. It's enough to make an eight hundred year old municipalities head spin! So much passion and frustration, anger and euphoria. I'm the best city! I'm the worst city! I used to be the best city but now I'm busy selling out everything that used to be important to me in the pursuit of small pieces of paper that can be exchanged for spa weekends and sports cars. Berlin, you're getting so expensive. Berlin you used to be cooler. Berlin, you're mostly now just full of Americans selling baked goods...

While I appreciate all the attention, let’s get a few things straight. I'm neither the solution, nor the problem. I can neither save you, nor set you free. I'm not an ace up people younger than thirties collective sleeve. I'm a collection of postleitzahls. Everything else that you like about me, is really just you, collectively. The magic of Berlin is just you, the people of Berlin.

Same for the "your Berlin is not my Berlin" nonsense. Well, of course it's not. That's the whole point. That's the reason you all packed up your shit, left your Kackdorfs and moved to me in the first place. Because here is the space and the freedom to find and create exactly the life that is meaningful to you. Cities give you the space, the options, and that anonymity to do that.

Meaning from your jobs, meaning from your homes, from your relationships, from friends, lovers, family, from those tiny little mini halfling dogs you all seem to like so much and let shit all over my wide streets. Where you choose to live your daily search for your daily meaning is up to you. No-one should be able to decide it for you. Tell you your choice is wrong. That you're too late. That you're making other people who already live there's search for meaning more expensive and that really everyone would just prefer it if you'd go somewhere else and search for meaning there, how about Russia? Russia is supposed to be lovely this time of year.

Whether you call heimat a beach bar in Cuba. A monastery in Laos. A favela in Brazil, or an alt-bau in Spandau. Each to their own. People want to live in me for the same reason you wanted to live in me. They are no less worthy because they are later to my no jobs, comparatively cheap rent themed party. Yes, even if they are Swabians.

When there are more things than people who want those things, those things go up in price until just one person wants them, or until someone makes more of those things available, when prices fall again. Sadly, you can't reason with the free market. You can't ask it to please be a little more rational and think about the little man, in his abject lowly poverty. He was there first, after all.

No, you can only regulate it, or pull up a chair and watch.

So let's all call a spade a spade, or at a minimum, let's agree not to call that spade gentrification. Words like that obfuscate the real problem, they stop you channeling your frustration at the people who could alleviate it. If there is not enough housing, or the housing is too expensive it's a failing of my government, elected by you, to represent you. Make them build more. Or stop privatizing what they have, so that richer people than you can speculate with it. Or both. Yes, do both.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/8348406-how-to-be-german-wie-man-deutscher-wird-is-now-available2013-07-23T16:34:14+02:002013-07-23T16:38:27+02:00How to be German / Wie man Deutscher wird is now availableAdam Fletcher

So it's been an exciting few weeks preparing (with the help of my publisher C.H.Beck) the launch of the book. I could write several blog posts about the rush of finding something you've written in book shops, as I experienced for the first time this weekend. In fact, I probably will, but I'll save that for another day. This post is just a short round up of good news, the big one being - the book is out. Since the 15th July. Read more about the book here - http://howtobegerman.net/

How's it selling, Adam?It's already the 81st best selling book in the iBookstore, beating even Barbara Dunlop and her book "Was für ein Mann!" Not bad. It's also fairing well on Amazon, picking up reviews and as I write this, it's the 1731st best selling book on Amazon.de. A promising start, but my goal is to crack the Top 100 which I will with your help and some press features.

How can I win the book, Adam?Several sites are doing giveaway, Venture Village has five signed copies, Berlin Loves You has three, C.H.Beck has five, and Lovelybooks.de has 10. In fact I'll also be doing an online reading for Lovelybooks via Google Hangout, this Thursday at 7pm (Central European).

Competitions are for the elderly, Adam. Where can I just buy the book?Purchase it at Amazon here Purchase it at The Hipstery (worldwide shipping) here Purchase it from C.H.Beck here More updates to follow. If you'd to schedule a reading, or just attend one, you'll find the contact form and listings here.

Greetings recently thawed comrades. With the Hipstery's vaults overflowing, we've applied generous savings and launched a short Spring Sale. With reductions of up to 50%, on our, how can we delicately phrase it? Less enthusiastically receivedproducts. Not just those though, even the very enthusiastically received ones are also reduced. I know, we spoil you.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7511850-learning-to-draw-in-30-days-a-challenge2013-03-15T18:38:58+01:002013-06-20T11:30:07+02:00Learning to draw in 30 days - a challengeAdam FletcherI do 30 day challenges. Or at least, I start 30 day challenges. Sometimes, rarely, I even finish them! But not often, because I'm lazy and forgetful. This month I decided I'd like to learn how to draw...

I do 30 day challenges. Or at least, I start 30 day challenges. Sometimes, rarely, I even finish them! But not often, because I'm lazy and forgetful. This month I decided I'd like to learn how to draw, because I remember how great it felt once I started writing for fun, back in 2008, and for the first time had a creative outlet. Not in a really profound artistic, oh look at me and all the abundant genius that pours out of my creative outlet sort of way, but just in a this idea is in my head and now I can get it out sort of way. I'm kind of hoping drawing might be another one of those.

There is a slight hurdle to this plan and that is that I'm absolutely awful at it. In fairness, I've not really tried to draw more than stickmen since I was about 14. For a good reason. When I pick up a pencil it says "put me down" and I laugh and say shut up pencil and it says "no really, you suck" and then it's no longer funny, because the pencil is right. I suck at drawing. My stickmen are more stick, than men, and sometimes you can't even really tell that it's supposed to be a stick. That maybe some graphite just sort of bled out angrily on a page.

I actually have very fond memories of drawing, back when I was a kid. Then I got to high school and there was this subject called Art and these qualification called GCSEs and then suddenly the two met. It all got very serious and the fun little sketches I did of Sonic the Hedgehog just didn't cut anymore, apparently. My classmates mocked my art. The teacher mocked it as well. I remember her saying "that's nice, what is it?" to one sketch and this became a bit of a class catchphrase for my creations. Another time she said a piece was "very interesting" which didn't mean it was very interesting, this was England, it meant very bad but in a way that respects the effort you've made.

So, two weeks ago, and about 15 years since "that's nice, what is it?" I brought a book called "You can draw in 30 days". Which is a very bold claim. I assumed there would be a money back guarantee on such a claim and I'd email the author one of my Sonic sketches and he'd be forced to return all my money and rename his book "You can draw better than before, in 30 days." or "Everyone except Adam can draw in 30 days".

I'm two weeks in, let's look at my progress...

Before

So we'd have a comparison, at the very beginning of the book we were told to draw a house, bagel and a plane. It is uncertain from viewing mine if I understand the basic principals of engineering or baking. Although it is clear that even if I do, I'm unable to articulate them using only a pencil.

Lessons 1 & 2

Were all about balls. I'm to going to make a joke about that because it's beneath me. By the end of lesson two we were also experimenting with foreshortening, shading, placement and some other of the 9 rules of drawing which I've forgotten but the book keeps banging on about.

Lesson 3

3d balls and movement. See my little man being fired from the hole, right up at the top there? Yeah you do. He loves it. This is one of my favourite drawings, mostly because it's awesome and also because I drew it.

Lesson 4

Balls got old. So we rolled out on out and starting drawing cubes. It's hip to be square and so on and other such dumb square jokes. Cubes are fun, mostly because they're not balls.

Lesson 5

Boxes. Here we were bringing in some more advanced 3d techniques that suggest depth. Anyone whose seen the movies of Rob Schneider will know just how flat things can get when they have absolutely no depth.

Lessons 6 & 7

Here things got a little structural. You'll see that I've become a GOD OF 3D by now. It looks like you're right in there with them, doesn't it? Like they're not drawn on boring, flat, white paper but chiseled directly into your mind! With, erm, chisels and stuff. Hold your applause folks, we're just getting started here. Actually on second thoughts, a little applause is fine. Spoil me. Oh, I see now I forgot to rub out the line behind the slides. Damn. Oh well. Can't win 'em all.

Lesson 8

Texture and Koalas. This lesson had everything, assuming that everything is comprised of three textured balls and one rather sour looking koala. The Koala is my favourite of all my drawings, because he's not a ball, cube, building or other boring object. He's a super cute, cuddly, pissed off little Koala.

Lesson 9

What you got for me now then, random author of how to draw book I found on Amazon? You ain't got nothing to test my mad stenciling. A rose? Really? That's it? Too easy. It was at this point that I began contacting galleries to see who wanted to put on my first exhibition entitled - balls, cubes and sad koala. Date tbc.

Lesson 10

Bowls and stuff. Enough said. Boring.

Lesson 11

Tubes. I say tubes, but really the point of this was to teach us about layering. Anyone whose experienced a Berlin winter will already be pretty familiar with the concept of layering.

Lessons 12 & 13

We mostly drew houses. From these two lessons I learnt there is more chance of me getting shingles than being able to draw them. If you scroll all the way back up, go on, lazy, get back up there, you can compare my house attempt from before I started to this knockout abode from the end of lesson 13. What do you mean I could have just included the before image again here? Yeah, well, everyone's a critic, aren't they. Only not of this house, of course, because it's clearly perfect and of high structural integrity.

More masterpieces from the hand of me will appear here later in the month.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7489618-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-barry-the-fish-with-fingers2013-03-12T15:08:03+01:002013-03-12T22:59:04+01:00Judge a Book by its Cover: Barry the Fish with FingersPaul HawkinsLife is short. Books are long. Some of them can't even be downloaded to your phone because they're made of old, dead tree. It's all very long-winded and silly, and you're a busy, modern-day champion of life. But never fear! The Hipstery is here to save you time and money by beaming books straight into your brain through the speedy medium of prejudice. Yes, this is us literally judging books by their covers. How clever of us.

This is a book about desire and disappointment. When Barry finds a magic anchor, he rubs it, and gets to make a single wish from the ghost of a pirate called Beardbeard. Noticing all of the things that Beardbeard can do with his magic pirate ghost hands, Barry quickly wishes for fingers. It is a bad decision, made rashly.

His wish comes true, but unfortunately the fingers he gets are fish-fingers, which all his fish friends find horrific and insane. For thirty pages, Barry swims around realising that being a fish with fish-fingers for fingers is completely unhelpful in the sea, because everything is slippery and there is nothing to really pick up or hold or throw or catch or squeeze. Trapped by his pride, however, Barry puts a brave face on his decision, even as it becomes increasingly apparent to all the fish around him that he has gained little useful dexterity in an ecosystem where all your body primarily needs to do is swim and wee. Barry gets increasingly unhinged, and secretly desires for nothing more than to return to his old life, free from the disappointing promises of magic. The book ends with the word Fin, which is an irony lost on its readership of early learners, aged four-to-six.

The book is an allegory for religion, but also teaches children not to rush.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7439396-the-optimists-guide-to-embarrassment2013-03-04T14:27:17+01:002013-06-20T12:02:41+02:00The Optimist's Guide to... EmbarrassmentPaul HawkinsLike a lot of people who browse the internet too much, I sometimes fall prey to a weird belief that I'm not stupid...

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Like a lot of people who browse the internet too much, I sometimes fall prey to a weird belief that I'm not stupid. This delusion is then further reinforced by hanging around with other people who think that they're not stupid either. The more I browse the internet too much, and the more I hang out with other people who browse the internet too much too, the greater the delusion becomes that I am not an idiot.

Me and my Reddit friends

This would then cause me problems when I did something stupid, because I somehow felt it was not representative. It was a blip on the graph. Uncharacteristic. The result, of course, was embarrassment, but not just the usual, ordinary embarrassment of an idiot who has come to terms with his idiocy. No, it was the crippling, facepalm, all day, head-shaking, eyes-closed, toe-cringing, laying silently in hot water, wardrobe-hiding, making aaaaaaaahhhhhhh noises kind of embarrassment. Less like a little brief pang of ‘oh, dear, what a silly bean I am,’ and more like an ancient hanging dynasty of lingering samurai shame.

Years after the worst-offending incidents, indeed, I could be happily strolling along, thinking about life’s nice little things, like ducks holding umbrellas, and some crippling embarrassment from years ago would suddenly strike again.

Here, for example, is a particularly persistent one that often tries to wander uninvited back into my day.

Back when I was studying Media Nonsense at the University of That Cost Too Much Money, I had to complete two weeks of work experience for my degree. Not wanting to really experience any work, however, I asked my cousin if I could visit him at the Post Production Studio where he did real things for TV people in exchange for currency. In the mornings, I would be a glorified runner, making tea and coffee for other TV people who did real things in exchange for currency, and in the afternoons I would spend time with a different department each day.

One day, I was in the Sound Room, then the Editing Suite, then the Room with Lots of Buttons that I completely understood. It was a lot of fun, and whilst I bounced between the different departments, I followed the progress of a TV show called The Complainers as various people applied their skills to it. I asked the sound people if it was any good. They told me it was shit. Then I met the editing people, and they also told me it was shit. Then I met the button-pushing people, and they told me it was shit too.

It was with my conclusion about The Complainers pre-decided with almost religious conviction, then, that I walked into a room the next day to bring two guys some coffee. One was busy editing, and the other stopped to chat to me.

He was an incredibly nice man. Perhaps the nicest man I’d met all week, even. He was friendly. Grounded. Sincere. He was giving off that ‘hey man, I get it, we’ve all been a runner, I respect you as a person and an artist, you’ll get there, we’re all in this together, comrade, nothing’s going to stop us now, viva la resistance’ kind of vibe, which was refreshing in a building where 95% of its inhabitants ordered coffee with a button. Hell, he even asked me about my writing ambitions, ignoring that my job was mainly the relocation of warm liquids. In short, he was probably Jesus, and we were probably going to be best friends forever.

Then it happened. Not so much a brain fart, but a rectum-shattering tornado of bowl-collapsing mind wind. I looked at the monitor behind him and saw that the editor was working on The Complainers too. If common sense hadn’t been on a coffee break too, apparently, it was probably the point it would have kicked in.

“Oh, you’re working on The Complainers?’ I said conversationally, keen to bask in the camaraderie of a shared grievance. “I’ve heard it’s really, really shit.”

His face switched instantly from a warm smile to a blank stare. The editor spun slowly and silently around on his wheely-chair, then stopped.

“I hope not,” the nice man said in an empty voice, “it’s my show.”

There was a long, awkward silence - it lasted about a day, and was comparable in its silence to the one on Christmas Day in the trenches of the First World War.

“...”

It was during this large quiet gap that I should have apologised, maybe even attempted a snappy bad joke about it. Just kidding! I knew you were the director all along, Dave sent me to say that, HAHAHA. OH DAVE.

Indeed, I’ve since thought about the hundred things I could have said in attempt to bounce that situation back to something like normalcy, and my final conclusion is that FUCKING ANYTHING would have been better than what I actually did, which was stare at him, make a weird, high-pitched giggle noise, stare a bit more while I registered that noise and absolutely no words came to my stupid open-mouthed head, then pivot like a weird kebab, and walk slowly out of the room in sudden, bizarre silence.

It was catastrophic, the way wars are.

To recap, then: I was bizarrely and suddenly rude to an incredibly polite man, by accident, by trying to suddenly and bizarrely impress him, on purpose, with an opinion that wasn’t even mine.

What did I just say?

Time, meanwhile, continued to insist on being a forwards-only thing, offering no possibility to change what had just happened. While I couldn’t change it, however, I realised that I could change how I thought about it. My solution was something I now call the ‘Etch-a-Sketch Method of Retrospection.’

I stopped thinking about my life as an aging canvas where all of its embarrassing details were permanently painted on to its past, but one long string of temporary nonsense drawings.

Indeed, perhaps only five minutes passed between me walking through that door into an ordinary situation, then walking out it again in that baffling context of wide-eyed dread. I mean, it was weird, certainly, but it wouldn’t topple civilisations. Rather than potentially carry around that new heavy baggage of shame for the lifespan of small mammals, or letting the memory haunt me with a significance that others reserved for car crashes, I realised what a temporary, fleeting thing it was. A particularly rubbish drawing on that day’s Etch-a-Sketch.

LOOK MUMMY ART

The nice man would complain about me, avoid me in the building, and later feature me in a small anecdote to his spouse (‘honey, there was a fucking weirdo today’). Quickly, though, he would forget about that tiny strange character in his day called me, then get on with his actual life of being a very nice man who may or may not make shit TV shows. Who knows.

Meanwhile, I could sigh, give the Etch-a-Sketch a shake, then carry dumbly on.

It feels like it has suddenly become a very trendy thing for smug freelancers and the self-righteous self-employed to moan about jobs – euurghh, jobs, yuck – and even to moan about the people who have them, like they're cowardly, uncreative, and worthy of pity until they finally see the freelance light – oh, those poor drones, heaving themselves to and from the office at the same time every day in an unpleasant metal shape, slogging away their existence...

It feels like it has suddenly become a very trendy thing for smug freelancers and the self-righteous self-employed to moan about jobs – euurghh, jobs, yuck – and even to moan about the people who have them, like they're cowardly, uncreative, and worthy of pity until they finally see the freelance light – oh, those poor drones, heaving themselves to and from the office at the same time every day in an unpleasant metal shape, slogging away their existence for mere crumbs from the table of some bastard millionaire who is casually unpleasant towards puppies.
Some people, indeed, are so convinced about the joys of self-employment that you would assume they stormed out of their last job with two fingers in the air, threw off all their clothes, buttered themselves, and have been chasing a butterfly in a field ever since.
However, the reality of freelancing isn’t all sun and money, of course, and you’d have to be deluded to think that the grass was somehow inherently greener on the side of the fence where you have do your own taxes, deal with sporadic income, and must always take your work home with you. Of course, for many people the pros of freelancing do still outweigh the cons, but there might also be some things you never you knew you would miss until they were gone.

1. Your time is always valuable

When you work for yourself, your time is your own. That’s what attracts most people to self-employment -- the lay-ins, the naps, the frequent snacking. It’s the dream, right? The downside, however, is that all of the time you inevitably waste is also time you’re not earning money. What’s more, because you’re paying for the electricity, water, cheese, and toilet roll while you don’t earn any money, it’s like you’re paying yourself to steal from yourself. You monster.
When you’re working for The Man, however, you’re On The Clock until the boss finally pushes you off it at Five. Generally, you’ll get paid the same whether you are working hard, hardly working, pretending to work, actively avoiding work, or staring dumbly out of a high window, daydreaming about what you'd be doing with a jetpack, or imagining yourself naked, buttered, and chasing a butterfly in a field.
Furthermore, the act of pooing is normally little more than a fibrous obligation. That is until someone else is paying you to do it, of course, when it suddenly transforms into a financially rewarding, leisurely activity, best enjoyed over the course of an hour while playing Angry Birds, or foolishly conspiring to steal all of your companies clients, and go renegade non-poo paid independant.

2. You’re not on call for companionship

Like everyone in the Universe, I now live in Berlin where I roam free amongst the freelancers. Back in London and amongst my old employed friends, however, I was the ‘one without a job.’
Indeed, people with proper jobs often imagine freelancers a bit like surfers - lazy, possibly stoned, vaguely out of touch with reality, and available 24/7 to waste time with.
Sure, they understand that you have to do a little something, sometimes, maybe, but they imagine your work more like a hobby than a job. If one of my friends was off work for the day, for example, they would immediately call me. “Paul!” they would announce, “I’ve got nothing to do today either, let’s go out!” Normally, they would win. Then, if I wanted to leave the pub earlier than was apparently acceptable, the same person wouldn’t accept “I’ve got work to catch up on tomorrow” as a valid excuse. In their minds, it just meant I would have to have a slightly shorter lay-in, or hit snooze less before I went surfing, or writing, or whatever it is that I claimed to do all day.
In short, having a proper job comes with an inbuilt respect that freelancing doesn’t. Meanwhile, the self-employed must spend a lot of their time trying in vain to justify how they are a GDP-positive use of oxygen, and not just a person who splashes around in the sea all day while trying to stand on it.

3. It’s the little things

It’s generally true that ‘every little helps.’ For freelancers, however, a better motto might be that ‘every little hurts’ as each miniature expense nibbles on your profit margins like a school of nuisance fish.
Take printing, for example. Your home printer hates you, and is designed to only work when you don’t need it. Which is why it can break, fail to connect, run out of paper, run out of ink, run out of empathy, and do all of the above in the same five seconds before your deadline. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had to call office friends, and frantically get them to print me an important document or boarding pass because my own machine is the actual devil.
Offices, meanwhile, are like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for all of that personal life admin shit. Need a pen or some biscuits for home? Take ‘em. Have to call a high-priced sex line in Australia? Do it at lunch. Need to print an important document or boarding pass for a useless friend who is blaming an inanimate object instead of his own poor organisation skills? Send it over, Paul. Shall I post it for you again as well?
Yes please, Alex. Thank you.

4. A conversation a day keeps the crazy away

‘Water cooler gossip’ gets a bad rap, like it’s obligatory small talk that nobody wants to make, but that everybody has to. Why? Because more than one person suddenly wanted to have water, but then couldn’t go back to their desks to drink it happily alone for some strange reason?

"If only cups were portable. I hate you, Dave."

This is office small talk as I remember it:

‘Did you see the event that happened on The News, last night? Wasn’t that a thing that didn’t affect us but which we noticed simultaneously because of The News, last night?’
‘Yes, yes, it was, wasn’t it. The weather this morning was so weather, wasn’t it? I couldn’t believe how it just seemed to do what it wanted, just like weather always does.’
‘I agree with you. What do you prefer, sausages or The Arctic Monkeys?’
‘I agree. Goodbye.’
The real reason ‘water cooler gossip’ gets such a bad rap, however, is that it is never compared to its self-employed counterpart. As a social person who generally works at home, the closest I get to frequent meaningful interaction is with a block of cheese. Don’t ask me why, but about once an hour I find myself looking in the fridge for no reason at all. I’m not hungry. I don’t know why I’m there. I don’t even remembering getting there, or leaving my desk, or stopping writing. But there I am, again, for the 18th time that day, checking in on the cheese.
‘Hello, Mr Cheese,’ I say, ‘me again.’

‘I’m worried about you, Paul. I think you should go for a walk.’’ Image Source: Costumes By Cameron

5. GooooOOOOOO TEAM!

It’s 5PM! Yabba-dabba-doo! It’s time for you and 90% of the workforce to slide down a big dinosaur, straight out of the building, and headfirst into eighteen pints of post-work beer.
To the pub, Team!
While madmen like me are still at home talking to Mr Cheese because extreme freelance isolation has broken our brains, you are an important component of a group with shared goals and achievements. OK, those goals might be profit for someone else, and, OK, those achievements might be that Company 72B1 just gained a 7 of their 0.18 over a 344%, but, still, that's going to affect the graph, isn't it! Yaaaaay!!
GooooooooooooooooOOOOO TEAM OFFICE SUPER FRIENDS!!!
Except friends will only ever be just friends, because you chose them. Co-workers are so much more than that. They’re people you’re forced to spend a lot of time with, don’t get to choose, might not like very much, and can’t change even if you hate them. They’re family.
Me and Mr Cheese, meanwhile, will never be family
Mr Cheese is just a cheese.

6. Iiittttttttt’s payday!

As a freelancer, you might one day be lighting a cigar with client cheques in a hot tub full of champagne and unicorn tears, then, the next, be staring into an empty food cupboard, wondering if the wooden shelves in the middle might melt down just enough to serve on toast. To avoid those extremes, you’ll generally have to budget carefully for both scenarios; squirreling away the nuts during the good times, then nibbling on them again during the bad.
Proper jobbers, meanwhile, are protected from the consequences of their bad decisions by modern society’s ultimate reset button... the paycheck. Indeed, you can make quite horrendous financial decisions at any point of the month that you want, and the only thing it affects is how long you have to wait until you can make those horrendous financial decisions all over again.
If you wanted, for example, you could carefully budget for exactly 30 days of delicious desserts, then wait just one more day for the reset button to refresh your bank account. The next month, mad on jelly and buns, you could spend all of that money in one single day by renting a hot air balloon, a brass band, and spending an afternoon haunting a nun with dramatic noises from the stratosphere. 29 simple days of nice nostalgia later, the reset button is hit again.
With a salary, your life really is like one big game of monopoly. No matter how many hotels sting you in the ass on your way around the board, eventually you know you will get to the end of the month, pass Go, and find yourself starting the whole cycle again with 200 big ones in hand like an invincible champion of modern life.

TL; DR: Don't quit your job, or you'll start talking to cheese.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7410618-the-optimists-guide-to-ageing2013-02-27T13:25:11+01:002013-03-04T18:10:36+01:00The Optimist's Guide to....AgeingAdam FletcherThe glass is neither half full, nor half empty, it just contains exactly as much liquid as is left. And did you pay for the glass? No, that was a freebie. You’re already winning. The Optimist's Guide to Everything offers you short, uplifting life advice.Today, the topic of aging...

"I don't want to go to school and learn. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want to always be a little boy and have fun" - Peter Pan.

I
understand now why people don't like getting older. When I was younger, I didn't quite get it. At family birthdays, people would do that
kind of happy but maudlin slumping complaining thing
about how another year had gone by and they're getting old and I'd look at them and think that
makes no sense, you're not getting old, you just are
old.

While getting to wear this silly hat is most enjoyable, I feel it doesn't fully compensate me for my increased proximity to death. Image Source: Egan Snow

This was mostly because I was a kid, and, therefore, stupid. In the
same way that popcorn comes in two flavours, caramel and salt, as far
as I was concerned, people were either young, like me, or old like
adults and trees and rocks and stuff. It was a binary decision made by some
higher power I hoped to please with handstands (I could do the more
exotic one handed kind!) and the drawings of me and mummy and daddy
standing next to our house, which I drew regularly and with great
fastidiousness, particularly with regard to windows which were
something of a specialism of mine. Noting my artistic talent and
flair from gymnastics I was confident this higher power would reward
me with eternal youth.

That plan worked just fine until it didn't.
But luckily, by then, as the first people were telling me my hair was
thinning on top, I was kind of done with that being young thing anyway, I had been for many years actually. Screw you, life. I remember exactly where that happened. Where I flipped from wanting to stay young and carefree, to actively wanting to become an adult. It was
in 1990, during Ipswich Cinema’s matinee showing of Peter
Pan. It was the birthday of a school friend who was young like me, but
neither capable of one handed handstands, nor showing the artistic
flair evident in my early crayon work. Middle management material, at best, whilst there was a distinct aura of Death or Glory about me.

Peter
Pan is supposed to be a kids movie. It has all the trappings. Songs.
Plot holes. A certain joyous peppiness. Crocodiles. Pirates. Fairies.
I can see how other children were hoodwinked. With all that
swashbuckling, plundering and general mischievousness. But I could
also see the deeper allegories. What with my superior intellect, even young, 7 year old me saw the real message. It's okay to get old.
There is no reason to fear it. People who try to stay young become
tragic embarrassments like Peter Pan.

Peter returning home after another bender, to Wendy's disapproval.

You
see, Peter is a drug addict. This is glossed over in the film with
the characters referring to the narcotic as "magic fairy dust".
Peter gets literally high on this drug and is able to float around
talking to the imaginary fairy in his mind, Tinkerbell, whilst he hangs around
with his orphan posse who are all boys. He's always with them, not
out of a sense of camaraderie and friendship which the film tried to
imply, but because obviously they're a gang, the other boys are his
muscle. He's a hoodlum. Leave the window of your car down one summer
night in Neverland and without resorting to racial profiling, I'm pretty
sure who'll be there jacking your stereo. The next morning, he'll be down
the secondhand shop pawning it for more cash for another hit of "magic fairy
dust".

Peter
does have a girlfriend, Wendy, but she's just not that into him,
mostly because he's so childish and she's bored of that shit already.
You see, he's exactly the sort of guy who would leave his pants on
the bathroom floor, never put the lid back on the toothpaste and on
market day, swap the last of their savings for magic beans.

Anyway,
in the end she leaves him and moves away and finds someone with
better career prospects and a car. He doesn't even get to second base
with her. He'll die a drug addicted, truant virgin. It’s really
just a tragic case all round.

Many
years later, once I was older and already enjoying all the benefits of that, like access to the bodies of women, alcohol and movies containing scenes of a violent nature, I switched on the TV to a documentary about Michael
Jackson, entitled Neverland. In it, he basically hung around in his
big mansion riding amusement park rides on his own and bugging the
parents of the neighbourhood to loan him their children. In the
previous months I’d been debating shaving my head, since I’d been
steadily balding for many years, but not felt quite ready to
let my hair go, however little I had left. It would mean I was truly an adult, old and bald, which I'm remain until I died. Then Michael climbed a big
tree in his garden and turning to the camera talked of how he wished he could be
young forever, then he sung "heal the world, make it a better
place". I’d seen enough. I turned the TV off, walked into the
bathroom and shaved my head.

No
thanks, Peter. No thanks, Michael. Getting old is perfectly fine and natural and I'll do it with a quiet, slightly reluctant dignity and increasingly frequent naps.

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7399070-how-to-be-a-stupid-tourist2013-02-25T14:43:29+01:002013-03-04T14:36:24+01:00How To Be A Stupid TouristPaul Hawkins
People are like beer. We’re all basically the same wet, delicious stuff, except that we’ve been poured into different shaped containers called ‘countries.’ While we grow up thinking that our shape of container is the correct one because we fit in it so perfectly, we look around at the others and think that their ones are a bit, well, weird. We wouldn’t fit in them, anyway - square beer, round glass, etc. When we finally do get to spend a bit of time in other containers, though, we realise that all of the other beer is the same as us -- except in a different shaped container that it assumes is the correct one too, just like we did. How silly of us. That’s when we become slightly smarter tourists, drink more, and start to enjoy different kinds of beer as well.

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People are like beer. We’re all basically the same wet, delicious stuff, except that we’ve been poured into different shaped containers called ‘countries.’ While we grow up thinking that our shape of container is the correct one because we fit in it so perfectly, we look around at the others and think that their ones are a bit, well, weird. We wouldn’t fit in them, anyway - square beer, round glass, etc. When we finally do get to spend a bit of time in other containers, though, we realise that all of the other beer is the same as us -- except in a different shaped container that it assumes is the correct one too, just like we did. How silly of us. That’s when we become slightly smarter tourists, drink more, and start to enjoy different kinds of beer as well.

However, some people are more like ice cubes, and it doesn’t matter which container you put them in, they’re still fucking ice cubes, bumbling around at the top of the glass and ruining the beer for everyone. We shall refer to these hopeless, opinion-frozen people as stupid tourists, and here’s a good guide to becoming one:

1. Nothing can protect you like a language barrier

If you want to be a truly stupid tourist you should avoid learning any of the local language no matter how long you stay, which will ensure all of the following steps are easier to achieve. At the very most, you should learn 'please,' 'thank you,' and 'sorry,' but use them interchangeably in all circumstances and contexts when pointing doesn't work.

For bonus points, you could even pretend you don't speak English very well, yet still dared to leave your little village and venture out into the big, wide world. That'll really blow their minds.

2. And the rest, as they say, is geography

History is such old news, really. I mean, who has the time? Not you. You're a stupid tourist. Your job is dancing around in a state of holiday euphoria, taking photos, and showering your finances upon everyone while being as culturally sensitive as a slab of foreign concrete.

For example, when visiting a country like Germany you might know there were some old, vague historical spats with the neighbors but that was more like a loud late night party that got a bit out of control and the police were called in, right? Right. Don't learn more. That frees you up to say things like, “Austria, that’s basically a mini-Germany, right?”

Fine. Alternatively, whenever anyone says that they are from a British city that is not London, you can ask “Is that near London?” If they say, “No, it isn’t at all,” then you can ask exactly how far away from London it isn’t. If they say, “it’s really, really far away. In fact, its the furthest place away possible. It’s on a bit of wood hanging from the edge of an island off the north coast of Scotland.” You should then ask them how long it would take to commute to London if they got a job there, like a real person.

“Hello, we've just teleported in, and are still grappling with the main concepts of the planet.” Image source: Electric Nerve

3. Money - it’s just numbers, man

The smartest way to be a stupid tourist is to see foreign money not as an alternate, competing system of currency, but a humorous real life equivalent of Monopoly banknotes. Paying for things abroad is different to paying for things at home, where the numbers beside the items in shops are anchored to a boring reality of consequences. No, on holiday you simply take out the maximum amount of foreign money your dumb brain estimates you could possibly spend, then buy everything you vaguely want until that number is gone. At this point, you can either moan about the situation for the rest of the holiday from the hotel, or use a cash-point to obtain another maximum amount of foreign money that your dumb brain estimates you could possibly spend again, then restart the countdown.

4. Can I just get one of everything? Thanks

With too-much-money in hand, it's time to skip merrily to the local supermarket, complete with its aisles and aisles of things you must choose by attempting to recognise the picture on the packaging. This is a lengthy but enjoyable process, as you get to become briefly acquainted with foreign cartoon advertising mascots, and the giggly names of cleaning products like Spaz! and Jizz!

Luckily, there are some international standards to help you: yellow tin means sweetcorn, cartoon pirate tiger means sugared cereal, and tall white box means liquid/semi-liquid product of cow. Beware, however, of pictures of fish. While they do still indicate fish, of course, it will be in a strange, new liquid you are not prepared to accept yet.

'Yellow tin' can also mean Shittos, of course.

5. Don’t fear change

Filling your basket with foreign products, of course, is the easy bit. You have all the time in the world to browse around, pick things up, put things down, stare at unknown items with intrigue, confusion, or horror.

Paying for things, however, is the tricky bit, and ultimately it is an exercise in keeping your cool under two overlapping pressures: 1. Interacting with a fellow human, sharing only the communicative devices of three words, pointing, and staring stupidly; and 2. Being part of a queue, which means you must be stupid, but quicker.

Because you are not going to hear/understand the assigned value of your bizarre collection of mystery goods, the simplest, quickest method of payment is to blindly hand over the biggest banknote you have. The cashier will then give you enough change to double your bodyweight. Put it in your pocket, move to the next shop, don't hear/understand what things costs, be too embarrassed to stand around counting your small coins, pay with the biggest banknote you have. Wash, rinse, repeat, until your hotel bedside drawer is an Aladdin's cave of one and two cent pieces.

Are you in the holiday mood yet? Yes? Brilliant. Just throw all your money at the screen and then in return you'll get one of our legendary Hipster Kits.

6. Two dancing hammer pickle breads, please

There is a secret game played by waiters and waitresses everywhere. Upon realising that a table of foreigners has entered the restaurant, the menus are switched from the normal ones listing meals and ingredients, to joke ones, which only contain lots of giggly words and prices that have been magically doubled.

While foreigners will study the cards for some time trying to hide their confusion at what is essentially a little book of scribbles, they will eventually pick then try to pronounce their choice to the waiter. The game can be won only if the waiter or waitress keeps a straight face as the customers earnestly orders ‘two DANCING HAMMER PICKLE BREAD and one NONSENSE FART PASTA, please.'

After your mystery meal, you’ll then need to get the waiter or waitresses’ attention to pay, without knowing the polite local custom to do so. Eventually, you will muster the courage to perform a well thought-out and elaborate sequence of pantomime gestures. However, as you've been sitting there with no plates and nothing in your glass for twenty minutes looking uncomfortable, the waiter will know you want the bill from the first sign of any erratic gesture. Everything after, from pretending to write on your hand, to mouthing 'bill' in your own language, to licking and sticking a banknote to your forehead, is simply theatrical decoration.

7. Question everything

To be a truly stupid tourist, you need to ask a lot of stupid questions. Not occasionally, but every time you open your mouth. Indeed, it’s best to phrase everything as a question, even answers. Think of yourself not as boring ordinary you, but more like the tourist host of a rapid fire quiz show. “How do I get to... yes”, “what’s the name of... thank you,” “what’s the word for Bier in English?”, etc.

"According to this map of Pyongyang, the Empire State Building should be right here..."

To be particularly annoying, when searching for a massive building/landmark, stand directly in front of it, and then ask the first person that walks past, “Excuse me, can you tell me where [massive building/landmark] is, please?” If they laugh or point directly behind you, ignore them and slowly unfold your giant 87-sided mega map. Then point at it, and say, “I think it’s somewhere near here, is that right?” Point at the wrong country.

8. Just the tip?

Tipping is the confusion cherry on the confusion cake. It's an insane human invention, anyway, let alone outside of your home territory, where the etiquette varies widely from place to place, resulting in the possible quantum phenomenons of either under-tipping, over-tipping, not tipping, really, really tipping, tipping too subtly, tipping too boisterously, tiptoeing around impolite tipping, putting just the tip in, etc.

Tipping is intended to be complicated for tourists because waiters know that when faced with the dilemma of seeming rude/being chased out of the restaurant by hairy men on mopeds, most stupid tourists will not only choose to tip, tip, over-tip, and keep tipping, but are also likely to contain pockets so full of loose change that they're actually delighted for the opportunity to unload a few heavy handfuls of them on to a little plate and leave the place with lighter trousers.

9. Variety is the spice of drunk

The key is to blend in.

Once your stomach has been primed with a new-flavoured plateful of mystery organic matter, it's time to attack yourself with foreign booze. Generally, because you've convinced yourself that the word 'holiday' implies 'being a bit different for a week,' your Inner Drinking Dial should be set to Sample. If done correctly, not-trying-the-same-beer-twice will soon devolve into trying a shelf full of regional wines, which will soon then devolve into drinking the local range of unknown spirits and cocktails.

Meanwhile, of course, you should devolve into a nonsense blibbering tourist arse.

10. I’ve got some more tips for you

With the booze flowing and the monopoly money unravelling like party streamers from your wallet in attempt to keep up, it's now time to tip again.

However, because you are no longer a stupid tourist, but a drunk stupid tourist, all care for cautious etiquette has gone down the bar's toilet, and been replaced with a new system of estimating value based on how attractive the person serving you is, dumb-drunk generosity, and a fleeting new clarity that life is too short, man; enjoying yourself now is what's important, dude; and money is only as important as you let it be, bro.

Unfortunately, this new shift towards appreciating life in the moment will probably be expressed less eloquently, with you on the floor, laying on your face, and shouting: “SHOTTTSSSS!!”

Want to know all the best places to act like a stupid tourist right here in Berlin? We've solved that problem with Berlin Bingo. It's a city guide, and entertaining 64 item scavenger hunt sort of thingy. Save 10% on it until March with coupon code "stupidtourist".

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https://store.hipstery.com/blogs/news/7378688-the-8-stages-of-learning-german2013-02-21T15:16:00+01:002015-01-08T16:56:53+01:00The 8 stages of learning GermanAdam Fletcher
Below are fictional diary entries. The diary of the average German learning expat, at least as I imagine them. Together they document the 8 stages of German language learning. Many do it far quicker and with commendable commitment, though most, I imagine, follow a path this haphazard. I did and am now at step 7.5. My German still sucks, and I’ve lived here for five years. I’m not judging or mocking anyone for how much or how little they’ve learnt, because that would be very hypocritical when I’m still this bad and, to be honest, I’m really just not interested. Learn it or don’t learn it. Up to you. Each to their own. That’s why we moved here in the first place, right? More freedom to live as we want without being judged. Okay, then let’s go...

This blog post is now part of my new book Make Me German by Ullstein Verlag.

Below are fictional diary entries. The diary of the average German learning expat, at least as I imagine them. Together they document the 8 stages of German language learning. Many do it far quicker and with commendable commitment, though most, I imagine, follow a path this haphazard. I did and am now at step 7.5. My German still sucks, and I’ve lived here for five years. I’m not judging or mocking anyone for how much or how little they’ve learnt, because that would be very hypocritical when I’m still this bad and, to be honest, I’m really just not interested. Learn it or don’t learn it. Up to you. Each to their own. That’s why we moved here in the first place, right? More freedom to live as we want without being judged. Okay, then let’s go...

This old, dead guy said it, so it must be true.

Stage 1 - Don't learn German

Dear Diary, guess who moved to Germany? Me! Yeah, crazy, right? It's a great adventure. Berlin is just amazing. I was born to live here. I can feel it in my soul. I have this super sweet WG down by Sonnenalleye, with this crazy Spanish artist guy and this lesbian couple from Canada who have a dog and a parrot and one has a tattoo of a wolf on her butt. Can you imagine that? I know. Yeah, I'm so happy to be out of my home country. Boring! That place was just stifling my creativity. Everyone should travel more. Anyway, the only problem is that people speak German here. It's really hard to understand them. I'm not learning that shit. Did you see what Mark Twain said about the terrible German language? He said it was pretty much the hardest language in the world to learn. I don't have time for that. I've got this big art show thing coming up. It's probably easier to learn Chinese than stupid German. In German they even have this thing with genders. Did you know that, diary? Der, Die, Das. Totally crazy. I'm probably not going to stay very long. A few months max, I reckon. No need to learn it.

Stage 2 - Don't learn German

It's been a year already, Diary? Unglaublich. See how I said unglaublich there? You can have that one for free, Bitte schön. Yeah, can't believe I stayed a whole year already. It's been wild. I love Germany. Especially the beer and the six streets of Neukolln that I know. I think I'll live here forever. But I still not learning German. I mean, I already learnt quite a lot. I get by. Basic conversation. In bakeries, sorry, I mean die Bäckerei’s! Anyway, I going to leave pretty soon, I'm sure. A few more months, I don't really need German, you know? I work in English. When I work. I have many German friends. Pretty much all my friends are German. We even speak a few words of German together, manchmal.

Stage 3 - Don't learn German

Two years already, Diary? Unglaublich. See how I said unglaublich there? You can have that one total kostenlos, Bitte schön. Yeah, can't believe I stayed two years already. It's been wild. I love the Fatherland. Especially the beer and the eight streets of Neukolln/Kreuzkolln that I know. But, I've still not really learnt German. I work only in English, you know. I can speak "enough", just the other day someone confused me for a German, when my back was turned to them and I hadn't said anything and I was wearing a hat. Yeah, happens all the time. Anyway, I'm going to leave pretty soon, I'm sure, a few more months, max. I love it here, but I'm just getting tired of all those new expats coming in and totally ruining the Kiez. Stupid Ausländers, they don't even like try to fit in. Yeah, I don't really need German, I speak "enough", you know? I get by. I mean I've tried, of course I've tried. But every time you speak auf Deutsch, they just reply in English. It's pretty much impossible to speak German to them, they all just want to practice their English with you. Maybe I should pretend to be Russian.

Stage 4 - Don't learn German

Three years here already? SeemlichZiemlich Verruckt! See how I said zeimlich Verruckt? Ja, you can have that one total kostenlos, Bitte sehr. I can't believe I've stayed a whole three years already! It's been a techno-filled blur. If I didn't have the 8201 photos of partying that I uploaded to Facebook, I'd not remember a thing. It's been really wild. I'm thinking about doing a startup now. Yeah, I'm just tired of that whole "arts" scene, you know? Or maybe I'll try some kind of DJ thing. Or I'll open a restaurant, maybe something with cakes. I don't know. Let's see. Many options. It did get a bit embarrassing the other day when someone commented on meinermein meinem Portemonnaie and I reacted angrily because I thought they were talking about my gut. I got a bit fat or should I say dick (hehe!) on Bier und Wurst. And port can mean like fat in English, you know? My lack of German is getting really peinlich now. I think I'll start learning it. I probably won't stay much longer though, a few more months maybe, max. But still, I think I'll do a course at the VauxhallschoolerVaulkshallschule Volkshochschule. Foreigners really should make effort to learn German. No, diary, Volkshochschule is not a place where they make cars. It's a public funded college thing so it's super cheap, but most of its teachers lost the will to live back in 1973 and now are just going through the motions. It's just round the corner. I start on Monday. It's super cheap.

Stage 5 - Erste Deutsch Unterricht

Wow, it was awesome. It's amazing how much I already knew. I guess you just pick it up over the years, you know? Like osmosis oder etwas. The course was good. The instructor didn't speak a word of English to us, right from the erste Klasse. Bin beeindruckt! So, the beginning class was pretty easy, names, ages, hobbies and all that. I can't wait for class tomorrow! I'm totally nailing this German thing now, I have no idea why I waited so long to get started? I love Sprachen lernen! Ich bin ein Berliner!

Stage 6 - Grammar

I hate foreign languages. I hate foreign people. I hate life. But mostly I hate German. The class is okay, I'm one of the worst, which can be super peinlich. I try to do my homeworkHausaufgabe, but the class is in the morning. You might not have heard of the morning diary, since I mention it so infrequently. It's basically all the things that happen before lunch. I know, crazy that they expect people to do anything before lunch, never mind complete tables of irregular boring verbs. Anyway, learning Vokabeln was fun but now all we do this total langweilig Grammar shit. If I hear the words Akkusativ and Dativ one more time I'm going to punch someone in dem Kopf. It's total sinnlos. The German language is such a dinosaur. Not even one of those good and dynamic dinosaurs like a T-rex, just a shit dinosaur that makes no sense like die Vaterkrautasaurus. I missed class today, for the first time. I had a headache and I hadn't done my homework. I'll totally be back there tomorrow though.

I have 17 books like this. 16 I've never opened. I don't want to think how many trees are felled each year to be sold to idiots like me, still delusional enough to think one more study book is going to make the difference. I use them mostly to prop up my monitor.

Stage 7 – Language no mans land

I didn't end up going back to class, diary. I missed a few with that really bad headache, more of a migraine really, a severe one, actually. Then I'd missed so many classes, I just couldn't really go back because I'd be too far behind. But it's cool, I've got the books and CDs and stuff, I'm totally going to study at home. I'll start tomorrow. If I just do one hour a day, I'll be fluent in six months.

Author's note: This stage can last for several years and it is only when the weight of public shame becomes so great, when sheer embarrassment has crushed all your excuses into dust and you've finally accept you aren't going to leave Germany in a few months, that in fact Germany is your home. Only after all that can you pass through to the final stage of German language learning.

Author's note: This is the final stage. You must refuse to speak English with everyone. Even English people. That's it. Once this realisation is made, it's just a matter of repeated effort, refusal to speak anything but German and the normal passing of time before you'll reach fluency, or at least the working semi-fluency that you'll never really need to improve upon. Sure, you'll probably never get a handle on adjective endings and you'll continue mixing up genders. All of which is totally fine and unimportant and many Germans also struggle with. But you'll learn it, you'll speak it, heck, occasionally you'll even think it and you'll be a credit to all us Ausländers. Assuming you don't forget all the 7 previous stages and how long it took you, becoming one of those preachy every-foreigner-must-learn-German foreigners, ranting at other foreigners.

Welcome, would be Germans. If you came here randomly, you'll probably want to read steps 1-10 first at Venture Village. Ready? Let's continue.

11. Eat Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut lost its importance to the rest of the world once we were no longer at threat from scurvy. Germans absolutely hate the stereotype that they're a nation of obsessive sauerkraut eaters. Really hate it. Many have stopped eating Sauerkraut entirely in an act of nationalistic principle, or maybe they just don't like sauerkraut (who could blame them) and this offers a more profound excuse for its avoidance. But someone must love it, or sauerkraut is playing a large and elaborate practical joke on the German people because if you order a German meal, in a German restaurant, there is an 87% chance it will come with sauerkraut. It's there. It's always there. It's like a pact was made somewhere at a secret meeting no German was invited to, a referendum of one and now sauerkraut is the official, national side dish. If there's no smoke without fire, and there's no German Hauptgericht without Sauerkraut, the stereotype has to be accurate. If you don't like it my dear Krauts, change that default side dish. May I suggest Baked Beans? It's a custom of my people and I must say, I find them to be delicious.

12. Look for a job

Good news Ausländer, the German economy is rocking. Employment is very possible. Even in the East, where formerly abandoned cities like Leipzig have redeveloped themselves into logistics hubs. So armed with all those new qualifications and letters before your name, you'll have no problems finding work. But not all work is equally prized. There is an unspoken scale of careers, known, but not acknowledged by all Germans. Real jobs and not real jobs. For a profession to count in Germany, it should have existed for at least a hundred years, be vaguely scientific or at least dense enough that it requires half a life time of study and the opportunity to acquire 67 different academic qualifications. It should be impenetrable to outsiders, shielded in its own complex language. Ideally, it should also start with an e and in ngineering. But other accepted professions are scientist, lawyer, doctor, teacher, something that involves organising things on a large scale, like logistics, or anything to do with cars. Otherwise when people ask you your job, the same will happen to you as happens to me, I reply "I'm a marketer", at which point someone says, "that's not really a job though, is it?"

New book! Make Me German

A funny, entertaining look at integrating (or failing to) into every day German life. Learn more.

13. Learn how to open a beer bottle with anything but a bottle opener

The bottle opener has existed in various formats since about 1738. The only logical reason why Germans can open bottles with just about anything, except bottle openers, must be that bottle openers didn't arrive here until 2011. Since then they've been viewed with suspicion and anyone caught using one declared a witch and burnt at the stake. I remember there was a website that every day, listed a new way to open a beer bottle, over 365 days. Some said they'd run out of ideas by the end, when they suggested opening it on the edge of a Turtles shell. Germans didn't read the blog, they knew all these ways already. Turtles shell? Easy, come on. Try and think of something a little more imaginative. Don’t you dare suggest a bottle opener.

So Ausländer, you need to learn at least 10 ways. Two of which must be with a lighter and a spoon. Turtle shell method optional but not discouraged.

14. Say what you mean

English is not about what you say, but how you say it. German is both, but more the former. Since what Germans say tends to be direct and prepared with minimal ambiguity. Ruthlessly efficient, if you will. In English, for example, if you want something to do something for you, you do not merely go up to that person and ask them to do something for you. Oh no. That would be a large faux pas of the social variety. Instead you must first enquire about their health, their families health, their children’s health, the weather, the activities of the previous weekend, the plans of the upcoming weekend, the joy or ecstasy related to the outcome of the most recent televised football match, then, finally, you can say "by the way", after which you begin the actual point of the conversation, before reinforcing that you feel guilty for having to ask, and only if it's no trouble, but would they be so kind as to possibly do this little thing for you. You will be eternally grateful. Germans do not dance around the point in such elaborate, transparent displays of faux-friendship, they just say "I need this, do it, by this date. Alles klar”? Then walk off. Once you've practiced regularly getting to the point, you may find the way to be short but very enjoyable. As for saying what you mean, Germans have rightly realised that sugar coating is best reserved for cakes. If I'm having one of my momentary delusions of grandeur I know I can rely on my German girlfriend to bring me swiftly back down to reality by saying something like "get over yourself, we're all born naked and shit in the toilet".

15. Feel mixed about Berlin

The average German has a complex relationship to its Hauptstadt. Berlin is the black sheep of the German family. Creative, unpunctual, prone to spontaneous displays of techno, unable to pay its taxes, over familiar with foreigners. To many Germans, Berlin is not really their capital, it's more like a giant art project or social experiment that only turns up when hungover, and in need of a hand out. To them, the true capital is probably somewhere more like Frankfurt. You know where you are with Frankfurt.

Updates since this blog posts was published

Update (July 2013): Thanks to the more than one million of you who've read, liked, linked and shared it. Steps 15-20 have moved into the book, along with 30 new ones, all of them illustrated in . Get the book at Amazon (it's a dual language, 50 steps in both English and German). Published by Beck Verlag.

Update (March 2014): How to be German has now been on the Spiegel best-seller list for the past seven months. Thanks to everyone whose supported it! You are the best. The new book Denglisch for Better Knowers will be released on May 9th 2014. It's a love letter to the German language, touring through its best ideas, phrases and words. It's available at Amazon.

Update (Jan 2015): How to be German has now been on the best-seller's list for one and a half years, selling more than 75k copies! I have no words. Well, that's not entirely true. Because I've just published book three in the series - Make Me German. It's a funny, entertaining look at integrating (or failing to) into everyday German life. Released by Ullstein Verlag.